Floor control message is disclosed.
Floor control in a conference call, push to talk makes a lot of sense. A number of people are discussing a subject and politely ask for the floor each time they believe that they have something to say. Once they get an indication that the floor is available, they start to talk. A protocol candidate to be used for floor control are the Binary Floor Control Protocol (BFCP) specified in request for comment (RFC) 4582 (An update of RFC 4582 is ongoing in internet engineering task force (IETF) at the moment) and Media Burst Control Protocol (MBCP) specified in open mobile alliance (OMA) Push to Communicate for Public Safety (PCPS).
3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) has started studying to evolve existing networks to LTE (long term evolution)-based public safety solutions, which name is Public Safety LTE (PS-LTE). Public safety network provides communications for public safety services such as police, fire, ambulance, war, natural disaster, and so on. In general, public safety network is mainly used for mission critical text/voice/video communications among large number of users.
Mission Critical Push to Talk (MCPTT) service in PS-LTE is intended to support one-to-one and one-to-many voice/video communications, where each user has the ability to gain an access to the permission to talk in an arbitrated manner. That is, MCPTT is a walkie-talkie-like service and the user can gain the permission to talk by pressing the ‘talk button’ to start talking. Push-to-talk sessions are basically half-duplex communications: while one user speaks, the others should listen. Some floor control functionalities are required for controlling the talk permission.
In off-network case, the multicast manner is used as efficient communication way for floor control unlike in the on-network. In addition to the feature, a current speaking MCPTT client acts as a floor arbitrator like floor control server in on-network environment. This indicates that floor control manner is server-less without dedicated central server. For this reason, the floor control for off-network requires that the floor arbitrator is delegated to next talker when the current speaking MCPTT client completes speaking and another MCPTT client is waiting for floor. So a good protocol to be used for floor control of off-network may satisfy these features.
MBCP is tailor made for mission critical applications and is focusing on allowing a participant to talk immediately. The use of real time control protocol (RTCP) allows the “floor control” session to be negotiated in the same speed as the media. No extra message for establishing a floor control session is needed. Further, including floor status message (taken, idle, etc) in media is very convenient when media is broadcasted. BFCP is focusing on floor control for conference applications. The use of acknowledgement for each and every message in the unreliable mode also when media is broadcasted is not suitable.